Fast food

Training with my new job today, so everything was all about fast meals.

Breakfast was my usual protein pancakes and blueberries, although still without any protein powder, as that should be here tomorrow.


Lunch break and I had my usual open faced tuna on homemade bread, with a nanner on the side.


Snack was a latte and some chocolate chips (a few too many, I ate a few more handfuls).


Dinner. I had some precooked chicken breast, so I just heated that up. Sauteed broccoli in coconut oil (this is my new favorite way of preparing it!) and more of the wonderful strawberries! I need to run to the store and get more of those and some more *blueberries*!!


After dinner was a power cookie that John made. I need to take a pic of those sometime.

Don't forget to enter the drawing for free Country Bob's sauce!

Giveaway: Country Bob's Sauce

It's Giveaway time!!
Country Bob's generously provided me with 2 bottles of Original All Purpose sauce to review.

I tried the sauce both cooked and as a dipping sauce. As a dip, the sauce is similar to A-1, although a little thinner consistency. It has a nice mix of sweet and sour notes, and almost a Worcestshire sauce flavor to it. I also used it as a sauce to cook with, and I think where the sauce shines the most. It cooked down into a sweet, thick sauce - really like a barbeque sauce. It makes me wonder what their BBQ sauce tastes like!

The ingredients are pretty good: Tomato concentrate, vinegar, corn syrup, sugar, molasses, salt, onion powder, caramel color, garlic powder, tamarind, corn starch, natural flavors and other spices. Side note - I was surprised to see tamarind in there. This is commonly used in Indian cooking, and is a sour fruit. Sauce is 25 calories per tablespoon - so not bad at at all!

I give this a thumb's up :) I believe that this product is available in Wal-Mart, so check it out!

Contest Details:
So, the company has generously offered 2 winners to receive 2 bottles each! You have 2 chances to enter. One is to leave a comment on this blog stating how you would use Country Bob's sauces. The other is to leave a comment on my weight loss blog regarding this same contest. Bonus entry for you if you leave a separate comment where you have a link to this contest (which I will check :) ).
Winners will be drawn by a random number generator on Thursday Feb 12th! Entries must be in by 8 am EST on the 12th. I will choose one winner from each blog comment section.

Have at it!

Fresh produce eats!

I love the first couple of days after grocery shopping!
Breakfast was pumpkin oats, minus protein powder - as we are out and it's on order (the brown rice powder). Topped with spelt berries and toasted pecans.

Mid morning snack on a break from training at my new job.

Lunch was more blueberries!! Plus a quick curry salad of cooked chicken breast, curry powder, light mayo and 8 red grapes chopped up. Served with Special K crackers.

Sunday eats

Not too inspiring with the post title, I know!
Sundays are bagel days for us. We always go for bagels! It's been a tradition for probably 10 years now.
Today was a visit to Panera Bread. Blueberry bagel with reduced fat cream cheese and coffee on the side.



After bagels, we went grocery shopping. There were fresh blueberries for only $2.99 a pint!!! I jumped up and down, as we don't usually see this til summer! So of course, I got some and they made an appearance with lunch along side my open face tuna sammie.


Snack was a latte and a piece of one of John's power cookies. And a few too many cashews .

For dinner, I made some chicken sauteed with a sauce that I am reviewing. Then I sauteed chopped brussel sprouts in that same pan. Quite good. And strawberries again, since we just went shopping! Ate lots of colors today.

Lunch in a barn!

We went out to lunch today (my choice for winning the fantasy football!). I chose The Silo. We like eating here, they only are open for breakfast and lunch, so it's pretty much only on a weekend.
I decided on the farm hand sandwich, which was ham, turkey and cranberry sauce with french toast bread. A bit like a monte cristo - only *not* deep fried! It was good. Canned cranberry sauce, but still tasty.


Went for an afternoon jog, then came back and had our standard afternoon latte:


Keeping with the different theme for dinner, I decided to have fish! I am not a big fish eater, it just tastes too fishy to me. I know that's silly, but tuna is as close to fish as I normally get.
Anyway, these were potato breaded white fish filets that I cooked in the toaster oven. They were pretty good, although I'm not likely to eat them again because at a calorie count of 240, they only had 9 grams of protein. Not quite up to snuff on nutrient value for me. More roasted broccoli and 2 clementines rounded out dinner.

Ricotta pancakes

Normally, my protein pancakes have cottage cheese in them. I'm out, so I decided to sub ricotta cheese instead.

1/4 cup part skim ricotta cheese
1/3 cup rolled oats
1 whole egg
13 grams protein powder
1/4 tsp baking powder
dash of cinnamon
dash of vanilla
Blend all ingredients together in a blender until smooth. Then cook as you would normal pancakes.



Topped with the standard blueberry sauce:
1 cup of frozen blueberries (I like Wymans wild blueberries)
1 tsp of cornstarch
1 tbsp of cold water.
Heat the frozen blueberries in a small saucepan over medium heat until hot and just simmering. There will be juice in the bottom of the pan. Don't boil them! In a small bowl mix the cold water and cornstarch. Add to the pan and stir until the mixture thickens up - about 30 seconds.



I think I prefer the cottage cheese, these pancakes were a little more dense and a touch drier. Very mild in taste, though. It does give me 40 more calories and 7 grams less of protein doing it this way than the normal way, but it was a fun experiment!

Apricot Chicken

Snack today was a bit naughty! It's Friday, though, right? We went out to a cafe where I had the house coffee and a brown sugar cinnamon scone! Yummers! That means no snack tonight.


Tried an experiment for dinner. I cut up some dried apricots and boiled them in about 1/2 cup of water, then added some cornstarch that was mixed with cold water to make a sauce out of it. Poured it over pan cooked chicken. The apricots are dark in color because they are the non-sulfered kind. Roasted broccoli again, because I really liked it last night! And a super juicy anjou pear.